


superfight

by persepoline



Category: Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Cartoon 2018)
Genre: Angst and Humor, Dysfunctional Family, Family Dynamics, Gen, discussion of disability
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-24
Updated: 2021-01-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:10:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26090125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/persepoline/pseuds/persepoline
Summary: You’d think Leo’s superiority complex and Donnie’s inferiority complex would be at least somewhat compatible.They’re not.
Comments: 31
Kudos: 122





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was written almost entirely in response to “Lair Games” but it actually takes place directly after "Bad Hair Day," the final installment in "Tales of the Hidden City" - like immediately after.

"WAAAUAUAUUAUUU _UAAAAAAAAAA_ -OOF-"

Who was making this noise? Leo blinked. Certainly not him. The cold, sterile smell of the inside of a Hidden City PD holding cell gave way, dizzyingly, to the familiar stink of the lair.

Portals were decidedly like roller coasters in many ways, and distinctly unlike roller coasters in many others. Of the four of them, Raph and Mikey had accumulated perhaps the greatest roller coaster experience, by virtue of having taken Baron Draxum on a whirlwind tour of Albearto Land - ultimately, however, similarities and differences alike went right over the turtles’ collective heads.

The thing about portals was that you couldn’t see where you were headed while you were going there. The other thing about portals was that there were no seatbelts, grab handles, or steering wheels. The _other_ other thing about portals was that you could not, strictly speaking, keep your limbs inside the vehicle at all times because the portal itself generally negated the concept of limbs _and_ time, on both a metaphysical and molecular level. In short, portals were (to quote a very bad Guy Ritchie movie) just like horses: “dangerous at both ends and crafty in the middle.”

“That,” said Michelangelo from where he lay plastered to the cement floor of the lair, “was like riding the New Jersey Turnpike on a unicycle made exclusively from string cheese.”

“When did you ride the New Jersey Turnpike?” asked Donatello, also from the floor.

“When did you learn to unicycle?” asked Raphael, also from the floor.

“I want some string cheese,” sniffed Leonardo, also from the floor.

For a long, leaden minute, nobody said anything. They simply lay in a heap, feeling various combinations of weary, smug, dejected, triumphant, not necessarily in that order.

Finally, Baron Draxum spoke. “I,” he said loftily, “would also like some string cheese.” He was still wrapped up in the straightjacket the Hidden City Police had used to restraint him. He frowned and wiggled slightly, but made no serious attempt at escape. April was the first to roll into a sitting position; the others watched as she pulled a sharp walnut shell from her pocket and began to dismantle the straightjacket.

“Blue, I did not enjoy that one,” choked Splinter. “You have got to get better at driving those things.”

Leo held up his hands in protest. “It wasn’t _my_ fault. I am but a natural conduit for mystic energies.”

Raph shot him a look of mild irritation. “You’re but a natural conduit for tomfoolery, more like.” He stretched and stood, offering a hand to his father.

Splinter accepted it and, with the dignity and grace characteristic of a wise ninja warrior, wobbled over to the nearest pipe protruding from the concave wall of the lair and began to gnaw on it with wild abandon.

“Uh.” April raised an eyebrow. “Is your dad ok?”

Donnie dusted himself off. “Yeah. He just sorta does that.”

“Hmm.” Draxum had shaken free of the straightjacket’s shredded remains and was stroking his chin as he watched Splinter. “This behavior is likely due to rats’ innate inability to vomit. Most rodent species are not anatomically equipped to throw up, so they’ve evolved alternatives to handle nausea.”

When Raph realized what was afoot, he jumped up and stumbled jerkily over to the pipe, which was starting to look less like a pipe than a cylindrical tube of swiss cheese, complete with tiny tooth-shaped holes. “Whoaaa whoa whoa-whoa whoa, dad, dad no, dad you can’t, remember last time? STOP CHEWING THROUGH VITAL CITY INFRASTRUCTURE. THAT’S NOT WHAT HEROES DO.”

Leo observed the spectacle with stupefied fascination. “Evolved alternatives. Riiiight. And one of those alternatives is incessant gnawing?”

Drax opened his mouth to speak, but Donnie beat him to it. “Consumption of non-nutritive substances, yes. The scientific term is _pica_. Rats engage in this behavior to deal with motion sickness, emetic drugs, radiation, and ingesting poison. In this state, they’re capable of gnawing clean through cinderblocks.”

Leo gaped at his brother. “Donald, have you by any chance exposed our father to radiation and nausea-inducing drugs as some kind of demented experiment?”

Donnie blinked. “Not at the _same time, obviously_. Testing competing factors simultaneously would have confused my results. What do you take me for, some kind of pre-Enlightenment goose?” He waved a hand. “Besides. How else was I supposed to cut so many cinderblocks at once? I merely utilized our dear father’s inborn talents for maximum destructive efficiency.”

Leo whistled. “Nice.”

“Indeed. Welcome to my twisted ankle.”

Not far off, their eldest brother was desperately trying to detach Splinter from a support beam. April had miraculously pulled a bag of walnuts seemingly from thin air, and was munching them in silence as she watched the spectacle. When she caught Mikey staring, she offered him the bag and he squealed appreciatively.

“Technically,” Donnie continued, “I did him a favor. Did you know rats’ incisors never stop growing? If he didn’t obsessively gnaw on random objects whenever he got seasick, his teeth would grow continuously in a spiral at an 86-degree angle, preventing him from eating and resulting in eventual death.”

“Wow!” Mikey grinned. “What a horrifying thing to know! Thanks!”

“Isn’t it just?” Donatello was reaching unprecedented levels of smug.

Leo elbowed the baron.

“Say, when were you planning on telling our dad that his horrible rat teeth could kill him?”

Casting aside the tattered remains of what had once been a restraining device, Baron Draxum drew himself up to his full height - which, even without the horned helmet, was probably close to eight or nine feet tall.

“Listen,” he said stoically, “I won’t lie to you, kid--”

\--and promptly exited the room.

The others blinked away their stunned silence.

“Huh,” said Mikey, scratching his head. “Really thought he was gonna finish that sentence.”

**. . .**

In the aftermath of getting arrested and escaping the clutches of said arrest, there was much work to be done. For instance: relaxing, languishing, reclining, unwinding. Surely these activities constituted work, right?

Leo certainly thought so, which meant this was probably true.

Later that evening, he was on his way to do the herculean task of making himself a rootbeer float when he ran into his dad and youngest brother in the kitchen.They were stooped over Splinter’s ten gallon cowboy hat - the one he’d used in his lawyer disguise to come break them out of jail - which sat upturned on the spotless counter of a kitchen island.

When he got closer, he realized the bowl of the hat was filled with damp soil. Mikey loomed over it proudly, a watering can in-hand.

“What have you done to my hat?!?!”

“I’m using it to grow melons,” Mikey explained matter-of-factly. 

Leo decided not to intervene and, neatly sidestepping the two of them, made his way to the refrigerator. Behind him, Splinter heaved a fond sigh. “That hat was a gift from my _real_ lawyer, Buffalo William Litigation & Arbitration. He once got me out of a fifteen-year Disney contract that I accidentally signed in Reno.”

“How do you sign a fifteen-year film contract by accident?” Mikey’s voice was skeptical.

“I thought a nice man was asking for my autograph, so I just signed the piece of paper immediately. This is why you must learn to read, my son. Reading is--”

“I, uh, know how to read already, Dad. Thanks for the concern, though. Hey! Leo! I hope you’re making us rootbeer floats too!”

Leonardo, extremely put-upon, fixed them both rootbeer floats.

“When did Orange learn to read?” He heard Splinter mutter under his breath. “I’m sure I did not teach him that.”

Leon slurped at his float. “You know I can read too, right Dad? We can all read?”

On his way back from the kitchen, he passed under the steam grate that sat at the top of the lair’s central atrium. The light filtering in was warm and placid now - daytime light. Up above, the sounds of a city just waking up could be heard: shoe heels on the pavement, car horns, taxi cabs whistling by.

Whatever Donatello was doing Laboratory 8B, it was sending up little showers of sparks that lapped at the open doorframe. Leo stuck his head in the door to see what was up, and found his brother hunched over workbench 427C, an abrasive disc saw in one hand and a box of tissues in the other.

_Oh_. So he was crying over a broken toy again. Leo was resolved to dip before the scene got lamer, but then Donnie coughed pointedly.

“I see you brought me a rootbeer float. That was oddly charitable of you. I will accept it.”

“Hey, no way. This float’s all mine.” Leo stepped deeper into the lab to take a look at Donnie’s new project, but he did a double-take when he saw the bo staff lying on the table, its end crumpled, loose wires writhing and fizzling uselessly.

“Oh. Damn. Ok.” He sat down on the bench. “Well this blows.”

The staff looked as though it had gotten caught in something, or maybe been wrenched apart? He felt a hand stray to the hilt of his sword. Not a lot of things could do that to reinforced titanium.

“This happened in - where did you and April go again?”

“Witch Town,” Donnie supplied with a sniff. He sipped sadly at Leo’s drink.

“Whoa, wait, really? That sounds kinda rad actually--HEY, MY FLOAT.”

“It was not rad.” Donnie sniffed angrily. “It was deeply unrad.” He glanced at the staff. “For some reason, it’s not functioning the way it’s supposed to. I’ve tried fixing it, but there still seems to be an issue with the micro-carburetor, and the--”

Donnie proceeded to say many words that Leo didn’t know. This happened with some frequency, so Leo sat back and stared at the wall until it was over. When Donnie finished with another tearful blow of the nose, he cleared his throat.

“Mhm, I hear ya.” He reached out a finger to flick at a bit of gnarled metal sticking out of the staff’s upper end. “I bet you can fix it though, right? I mean. It’s been broken before. And you fixed it that time.”

This was an objective fact. The staff had, in fact, been broken once before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm going somewhere with this i promise


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, here's the deal with this fic: it's mostly wholesome family humor accompanied by a moderate smattering of angst. This chapter is very dialogue-heavy, so much so that I felt a heads-up was in order.
> 
> Here's the other deal with this fic: There's a backwards time skip between the previous chapter and this one. The previous chapter took place directly after "Bad Hair Day", whereas this chapter takes place not long after "Lair Games." If you find this confusing, you're welcome to reread Chapter 1, but honestly I wouldn't worry about it too much! The events of this chapter are a flashback: as long as you're clear on that, the rest is irrelevant.

**[ THREE MONTHS ? EARLIER ]**

The game was simple. 

The white cards represented people and the black cards represented attributes. The referee would blind-draw one white card and two black cards from the deck and lay them out for everyone to see, creating an opponent. Each player would create their own fighter using a combination of person cards and attribute cards from their own hand. One by one, the players would lay down their chosen combo and try to convince the referee that their fighter would beat the opponent in single combat. The referee decided the outcome of the match, and the next round would begin with a different player acting as ref.

It was so simple, a child could play it - and currently, five children were doing exactly that.

“DAAAAAAD.” Mikey’s voice rang through the lair, bouncing off smooth cement walls. “LEONARDO’S CHEATINGGGGGGGGGG.”

“How, pray tell, am I cheating? How could I _possibly_ cheat?”

“That is _word for word_ what you say when you’re cheating. You are a parody of yourself, Leon.”

So basically, it was a typical Friday night deep below Washington Square Park...or thereabouts. Wooden planks lay strewn about the lair’s central atrium, along with tape measures, drill bits, hand saws, chisels, a mallet, a smoothing plane, and a variety of tools that only Donnie could name - all of which made terrifying noises if you so much as looked at them wrong.

The Mad Dogz had long since abandoned the day’s original project, which had begun as _Operation: Build A Vert Ramp_ and had grown outlandishly complex under Donnie’s industrious zeal.

“I don’t see why a vert ramp needs two box jumps and a zipline attached,” Raph had said.

“Because, Raphael, we’re not savages.” Donatello flicked up his holographic welding visor for just long enough to send his brothers a baleful smirk. “A life lived not to the fullest is no life at all. Now, would you be so kind as to hand me the nitroglycerin?”

Raph had declined to hand Donnie the nitroglycerin and, after a quick scuffle, the project was abandoned in favor of a family-friendly card game of Raphael’s choosing. And so the turtles came to be thus:

“DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAD.”

Splinter materialized on top of the table. “Orange, the acoustics in this sewer are too good for you to be yelling this loud. I can’t hear my infomercials.”

“Maybe you should, I dunno, play the next couple rounds with us?” Donnie mumbled, the state of his cuticles suddenly absorbing all of his attention. “To _make sure_ Leo isn’t cheating.”

“I _wasn’t_.”

Splinter scratched his wiry chin. “Perhaps I could preside over a round or two…”

“Yeah, that’d raise the stakes.” Mikey shuffled a new hand of cards eagerly. “With an extra player, we can pair off into teams of two.”

“Nonsense,” said Splinter painstakingly dragging a step-stool over to the card table. “I will judge first.”

Mikey pouted. “On what grounds?”

“On the grounds that I am your father.”

**. . .**

Splinter flicked his tail. “I win!”

They had been playing Superfight for over four hours.

“Wait a hot second,” April raised an eyebrow. “On what grounds?”

“On the grounds that I am your fath---oh. Huh.”

April doubled over. “Come on, Splintz, that noise won’t work on me. You are actually not my dad. Like, literally. And besides - what’re you gonna do, _parent_ your way to the top?”

All four of the turtles burst into uncontrollable laughter.

Splinter narrowed his eyes. “Why is that so funny?”

The thing about the card game Superfight was that it didn’t really have a natural end-point. Theoretically, one could keep playing and playing, with complete disregard for propriety. Currently, the turtles were experiencing the documented effects of playing a family-friendly card game for far too many consecutive hours.

And yet, another hour rolled around - and so did another round of the game.

“Your opponent is...” Mikey pulled the last of his three opponent cards and trailed off, looking puzzled. “Dad, what’s a femme fatale?”

“It means a fatal woman,” Splinter said, after struggling for a moment to define the term.

“Why would a woman be fatal?” Raph asked.

“C’mon,” said Leo, arm slung casually over the back of his chair. “You know how women are.”

Donatello stared at him. “No??? We don’t????”

“You don’t,” said April flatly.

Leo smirked. “And neither do you,” he pointed out. “Aren’t you constantly having to outsource Mikey’s emoji expertise in order to decipher texts from your own girlfriend?”

April slouched forward, forlorn. “Why does she constantly replace random letters with 🅱️??? I’M ALREADY DYSLEXIC.” She straightened, sobering. “And Sunita is not my girlfriend. She’s just a girl. And a friend. Pure coincidence.”

“Uh huh.”

Donnie considered the women he had met recently. He could count them on one hand, which said a lot because he only had six fingers in total. The bat receptionist at the undercity library, Big Mama, that Foot Clan recruit who always gave the impression she’d had too much caffeine…none had proven fatal yet, but he wouldn’t put homicide past any of them. Beside him, April looked ready for the topic of conversation to move on. He cleared his throat.

“Mikey, what attributes does your femme fatal have?”

“She explodes if she stops moving and is distracted by shiny things.”

“Well,” said Raphael, laying down his fighter cards. “She can’t possibly beat a mummy armed with a samurai sword, who can fly if nobody is watching.”

April leaned forward. “What’s your reasoning?”

“Well, if she’s distracted by the glint from the blade of the sword, how’s she gonna fight?”

April scratched her chin. “I’m pickin’ up what you’re puttin’ down. Challengers?”

Donnie cleared his throat. “That’s all very well, but alas, neither of them will best---” he flipped his fighter card over, “---the entirety of the United Nations.”

Raph grinned. “How’d you figure?”

“The fatal woman explodes if she stops moving, yes? And what makes people stop moving?” He flipped his first attribute card, which read _Armed With A Sadness Ray_. “BOOM: being deeply, irreparably sad.” 

“Donnie, is there something you wanna tell us?” Mikey was asking, but the question was drowned out by the sound of Donatello attempting to make a record scratch noise with his mouth as he prepared to reveal his final card.

“And!” he said, “ _And_.”

“Oh my god _flip the card already_.” That was Leo.

Donnie glared daggers. “Thȇątéř cannot be rushed. Anyway, if the sadness ray doesn’t work, the United Nations also has a chainsaw.”

“Is that one chainsaw, or does every representative from every country have their own custom chainsaw?”

April shrugged. “Either way, it’s good enough for me.”

She passed the white opponent card to Donnie, who had begun constructing an elaborate card tower using his wins.

April poured herself more Pepsi. “Alright, Splintz, you’re up to bat again.”

Splinter approached the deck with an expression that could only be described as unhinged glee - but when he flipped his cards over, his face fell.

“Your opponent is,” he squinted, “ _your ex?”_ He placed it on the table. “Ridiculous! My sons have no exes. They are extremely little---”

“Dad, Raph is almost sixteen and roughly the size of a Honda Civic.”

“---extremely little and have _no manners_ ,” Splinter finished. “How will I ever marry you off when you keep interrupting people?”

“Uh, Splintz? Hate to break it to you, but I think our opponent is supposed to be _your_ ex.”

“Aw, c’mon!” Raph threw up his hands. “We fight Big Mama all the time in real life and now we also gotta fight her during our escapist family-friendly fantasy fun night? This blows.”

“Not to mention she’s…” April leaned over to squint at the attribute cards, “balancing on a circus ball and...is Amish??”

“Pfft.” Mikey laid down his fighter combo. “Bet she can’t beat a homeless man who relies on heat vision to see and can take the form of anything water-based.”

“Hey, I think I know that guy!” said Leo. “He plays the banjo on the corner of 1st and Lex.” He shuffled his hand thoughtfully.

“I think I know the guy you mean,” said Raph. “He’s not a bad musician, but I don’t think he’d beat Spider Lady in a fight. Not like my mafia don who’s three stories tall and wears clothes that are way too tight.”

“Oh yeah?” Donatello waggled his sharpie eyebrows. “Well, how’s he gonna do against a Girl Scout who can become mist and summon anything from a hardware store?”

“Sounds like that Foot Clan recruit,” muttered Mikey.

“Nah,” said April. “No way is she gonna beat my, uh.” She consulted the cards in her hand. “Angel who controls an army of flying monkeys _and_ the weather?” April visibly brightened, straightening her shoulders and taking on a prematurely victorious expression. “Well, it’s clear that I’m in the lead - my player’s an angel, after all. That’s a literal messenger of the big guy in the sky himself!”

“But you’re Jewish,” Raph pointed out, confused.

“Raphael, they have angels in Judaism,” said Mikey.

April laid her cards on the table so that the others could corroborate her play. 

“Angels are mad effective,” she grinned, confident in her win. “I’d like to see anybody try to one-up a butt-kicking from above.”

All eyes turned to Leo, who had yet to put down a hand.

“I am terribly sorry to inform you of your loss,” he said, a slow smile breaking across his face, “but I think I have a combo that does, actually, one-up a butt-kicking from above.”

He laid down his combo.

April leaned forward, aghast. Mikey’s jaw dropped to the floor; Raph’s and Donnie’s followed suit. Splinter did not seem to be paying attention in the slightest.

“BOOM, BABEYY.” Leo threw up half a dozen Naruto hand signs in quick succession. “A Viking who breathes fire and is semi-proficient in playing the lute.”

Raph coughed. “Okay, fire is kinda dope, but what the heck is lute-playing gonna do against an angel?”

Leo smirked. “Oh, I couldn’t care less about the lute...or the fire. But get this: the Vikings didn’t _believe_ in angels, bro! They had valedictorians--"

“ _Valkyries_ ,” Donatello muttered.

“Yeah, that’s what I said.” Leo waved a hand. “Basically my point is, what’s an angel gonna do against somebody who doesn’t believe in angels?” He got out of his chair and performed a completely unnecessary flip. “CHECK MATE.”

April crossed her arms. “Is it though? Is it really?”

Leo sat back down again. “As some guy once said,” he recited, “what’s a god to a nonbeliever?”

“Uh-huh.” Michelangelo looked unimpressed. “And as Lil Wayne once said, what’s a goon to a goblin?”

But, protest as they might, no one stopped Leo when he reached across the table to add April’s cards to his stack of wins.

**. . .**

The game stretched long into the day, way past the turtles’ usual bedtime. Dawn came and went, slim fingers of sunlight poking in through the perforated iron steam-grate that sat directly over the Lair’s central atrium. When the first rays of morning sunshine began to illuminate the sewer that the turtles called home, April yawned, packed up her things, and said goodbye (her parents thought she was at a human sleepover - which was _almost_ true - and she had promised to be home in time to eat breakfast with them, she said.)

Mikey hugged her goodbye. Raph fist-bumped her in farewell. Even Splinter threw a steadfast salute her way. Donnie and Leo, however, barely acknowledged her departure: they were engrossed absolutely in the game.

Over the past couple hours, Donnie had emerged as a strong second in the rankings, even going so far as to pull ahead of his brother at more than a handful of intervals. Mikey disappeared momentarily into the kitchen, reappearing a minute later bearing bowls piled high with popcorn.

The twins were evenly tied. This was shaping up to be quite the battle.

“Last round,” sighed Splinter, rubbing his back tiredly. “It’s past dawn. Your bedtime was ages ago.”

“But Dad!” Leo protested.

Donnie rubbed his hands together fiendishly. “That’s okay. I only need one more turn to beat you, anyhow.”

Leo narrowed his eyes.

Raph placed a finger on the slim stack of remaining white cards, preparing to draw his brothers’ final opponent from the deck. “Your adversary,” he boomed in his best impersonation of a sports announcer, “is former United States President Millard Filmore, with robotic metal claws and a beard made of bumble bees.”

Leo had a blank expression on his face. “Former United States President _whom?”_

An equally blank-looking Donnie had his phone out and was furiously typing in the Google search bar. “The 13th president of the U.S….apparently his only accomplishment while holding office was annexing California as a state.”

“Ew,” said Michaelangelo, who had never once set foot in California.

“Ew,” said Splinter, who had spent a significant chunk of his life working in California.

Leo shrugged. “Huh. Weird stylistic choice, love that for him. Anyway,” he said, placing his card combo facing up on the table, “prepare to be crushed by Jet Li, who is piloting a dirigible and has the power to shoot daffodils out of his hands.”

All around the table, there were awe-filled murmurs of appreciation. Jet Li was, as Sunita had once put it, a “BFD” - a Big Flippin’ Deal.

“Hm, I don’t know about this one, Blue,” said Splinter, leaning over Leo’s shoulder to inspect his combo. “Daffodils aren’t very in-character for Jet Li.”

Leonardo let out a muffled squeak. “Dad, don’t tell me _you knew Jet Li??!?!_ ”

Splinter scratched at his whiskers. “We were….acquainted for some time. Shot a pilot together.”

Mikey’s jaw hit the floor for a second time that day. “Ohmigosh, what’s he like?”

“He had very sweaty palms,” the aging action star sighed.

“Dad.” Leo’s voice had pitched itself three octaves higher than usual. “Padre. Father. Did you hold hands with Jet Li, Dad? Dad, did you date Jet Li? _I need to know if you dated Jet Li_.”

Raph looked like he was having heart palpitations.

Splinter frowned. “That’s unimportant. At any rate, I do not think your card is going to deal effective damage against your opponent, my son. It is not even accurate - Jet’s favorite flowers were irises, not daffodils.”

Leo’s voice had gone so high, he sounded like a mouse trapped in a fruit dehydrator. “Oh my god _my Dad dated Jet Li_.”

On the opposite side of the table, Donnie, who had been scrutinizing his own cards, let out a maniacal, villainous cackle. For him, it was really more of a run-of-the-mill Donnie laugh.

“Prepare to meet your ĐǿƠ𝓜, brother.”

The rest of his family looked up.

“Pfffft.” Leonardo rested his chin in his hands. “As if anything _you_ come up with is gonna beat former U.S. President Fillard Milmore and his bumblebeard, let alone _me_.”

“ _Millard Filmore_ ,” Donnie corrected. “And honestly, Leon, you ought to cease running your mouth, lest it catch flies~!”

Leo glared. “Alright, that’s enough theatrics. Lay your cards down and we’ll see who the real winner is.”

Donnie laid down his cards.

“See, the thing is,” he said, smugness oozing from his voice, “I agree: I really can’t beat you, Leo. No one can. _And that’s why I win_.”

The turtles (plus rat) stared at Donnie’s cards.

Then they stared some more.

“So...your fighter combo is…” Raph scratched his head, craning his neck at an awkward angle to read the words printed on the cards, “...the player to your left...who can become mist while holding his breath..and throws bears?”

The player to Donnie’s immediate left was, in fact, Leonardo.

“By your own logic, Leo, you’re unbeatable.” Donatello leaned back in his chair, arms folded nonchalantly behind his head. “Do you deny it?”

In the chair beside him, Leo looked like he was having perhaps the third- or fourth-worst day of his life, which was still a pretty bad day. His brothers were relishing it.

“Looks like somebody’s hubris has come back to bite him!” laughed Mikey, slapping Leo on the shell.

“Man,” Raph chuckled, reached across him to shake Donnie’s hand, “this is one for the books, huh.”

Leo watched, uncomprehending, as his father began scooping up the cards and putting them back into their box.

“Wait,” he said, “hold on---”

“Uh-uh,” Mikey grinned a good-natured grin, “you made your bed, bro, and now you gotta lie in it!”

Leo blinked. He found he was having a hard time understanding how, exactly, he had lost so thoroughly as he had.

Everyone was laughing at him.

“Game well played?”

Leo turned. “Huh?”

Beside him, Donnie had finished clasping Raph’s hand for what had to be five minutes now and rounded on Leo, arm outstretched. He had a wild, happy look in his eyes.

“Well played,” he repeated, smiling.

“Oh, uh.” Leo shook his brother’s hand, but the gesture felt awkward - and not because each of them only had three digits. “Yeah. Well played.”

But Leo did not, all of a sudden, feel that he had played well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't believe it took me two full chapters to work up to the angst...but we're finally there. Next chapter, things get interesting. And by that I mean moderately uncomfortable :^)
> 
> If any of y'all got the "you know how women are" reference, just know you're a huge nerd and I love you. If not, I implore you to watch [this clip](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGD6JWuj7Lw) that lives rent-free in my brain.
> 
> Also, fun fact: a lot of the dialogue in this chapter was lifted nearly verbatim from the last game of Superfight I had with my family :,))


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another superfight occurs, only this time it's a real one. Conversations are had.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi there y'all, it's been a while! i decided to combine my planned chapters 3 and 4 because i'm impatient. hope you enjoy!

He hadn’t meant to do it. It was an accident. Out of his control.

He told Donnie as much, over text, somewhere between fourteen and forty times. When his twin brother failed to respond, he told his other brother and then his younger brother and, finally, anyone who would listen - which of course meant April.

**Yeah thats what Don said u said lol**

**ur LOLng me? @ a time lyke this???**

**Sure am, despite the fact it really aint all that funny…lol**

There it was again, that churning feeling in Leo’s lower abdomen. He was glad he and his brothers had passed on the whole ‘having-a-human-digestive-system’ thing: it was the reason they were able to eat objective garbage (subjective pizza) and do sick kickflips right after and not lose their lunch to the G-forces.

**m tellin u dude it was n accidnet**

**accident**

He watched the little shimmying dots on the screen that told him April was typing a message to send back. When the dots disappeared, he waited the runtime of one video by his favorite Minecraft streamer before texting again.

**y still there**

**Still on my phone? Still living in nyc? Still alive?**

**all 3**

**Sure am**

**so**

He swallowed, then pressed the send button.

**has don said anything about the incidnent**

**incident**

There they were, those shimmying dots again. But when April replied, her response was nothing more than, **Yeah.**

_Oof_. Leo winced aloud. A capitalized single-syllable word, with a period to boot. That was bad. This...this was bad.

**well i bet he didnt explain the whole story**

**jus lyke**

**his side of it**

_So there!_ Leo thought privately. But April’s response was swift this time.

**If by his side you mean, yall got in an argument and suddenly his staff was in pieces? Lol yeah i guess i heard his side**

Oh boy.

Maybe this whole situation was worse than he thought.

**. . .**

It had started as a fight about Donny. No, not _his_ Donnie - the other one. The one and only, the great Donny Yen: actor, martial artist, film director, producer, action choreographer, stuntman, and kungfu champion. (Yes, dad knew the guy from back in the day. Yes, he almost certainly had crazy stories. No, he wouldn’t tell Leo any. Yes, Leo was mildly pissed about it. But all that was beside the point.)

“Yo.” Raph did that whistle thing with his hands to get everyone’s attention. “Anybody up for _In the Line of Duty 4?”_

The fourth installment in the franchise was the only one they owned on fossilized VHS tape and owing to that, it held a special place in the turtles’ hearts. Leo had amassed many a fond memory sitting in front of the TV with his brothers, too young to have figured out how online movie piracy worked, fully immersed in the world of Hong Kong martial arts.

Only, today he wasn’t quite feeling fond. Not exactly.

It was the day after their family game of superfight and everyone was chilling in the lair’s central atrium. Don and Mikey were back to working on the vert ramp, while Leo himself lounged not far off, head buried in a manga that he was neglecting to actually read.

“Oh!” Mikey jumped up, handsaw brandished. “I’m up for it, so long as you guys’re down to reenact the fight scenes like we used to when we were kids!”

Don emitted one of his patent Scoff©s. (No, seriously, he’d actually filed for a patent, the mad lad.)

“Not a chance!” He folded his arms. “If I recall correctly, you never let me be Donny Yen.”

Behind the manga, Leo rolled his eyes. “So?”

“My actual, _literal name is Donnie_ and you _wouldn’t let me_ be Donny Yen!”

“Maybe you just weren’t good enough at fighting to be Donny Yen,” Leo retorted.

“Welp,” said MIkey cheerfully, “you’re a pretty solid fighter now, so maybe you should be Donny Yen this time.”

“Oh yeah?” said Donnie in _that voice_. Ugh. Leo didn’t need to put down the comic book to know his brother was preening. “Well, I suppose you’re not incorrect…I a’m a pretty solid fighter now.”

“Y’know,” said Leo, snapping his manga shut, “technically we’re all pretty solid fighters at this point. So I don’t see how your skills would qualify you for--”

Donnie grinned and twirled his staff in what Leo supposed was meant to be a threatening way.

“Guess there’s only one way to settle it!”

Raph leaned on the half-built vert ramp, waving the ancient VHS. “Aw, c’mon, don’t tell me you’re really gonna--”

Whatever he said next was drowned out by the sound of metal against metal. Leo had launched himself at his brother, Donnie bringing his staff fluidly up in front of his face to deflect the blow.

“Whoa!” Donnie called, sliding backwards from the force of the strike. His voice was warm, tinged with excitement. “No aiming for important bits!”

Leo spun on his heel, ran up the side of the vert ramp, and dove to catch Donnie on his opposite flank. He swung his blade around the place where his brother stood and sure enough, the air began to dissolve into a wispy ring of blue static.

“WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAA--”

The familiar smell of ozone permeated the air. The portal zipped shut and Donnie was gone.

“--OOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAHHHHH!” 

Yep, just like clockwork.

The only problem was that Leo could’ve sworn he’d intended for Donnie to reemerge from another portal on the far side of the lair. That did not happen. What happened was this: Leo heard the sound of his brother’s voice echoing faintly from overhead, and then...not so faintly.

Oh. 

_Oh, crap_.

Leo had about a split-second warning to brace for impact before Donnie plummeted from the portal that had materialized - against Leo’s wishes - directly above his own head.

“OOF.”

Leo imagined himself turning into a pancake-shaped turtle, a little blob of green breakfast fare like in that book Green Eggs & Ham that dad used to read to Raph every night, as he felt Donnie’s weight flatten him to the lair’s floor.

His head spun a bit.

Why didn’t the portals appear where he envisioned them? Why couldn’t the stupid sword do what he told it?

Above him, Donnie’s _whoah_ had taken in the triumphant tones of a _woohoo_ : the absolute worst sound to hear from Donnie.

Leo raised his head as he felt his brother jump up, off of him.

“Aha!” Donnie cackled. “Hoist with your own picard! I mean, er- petard! Your ass is _vanquished._ I am victory incarnate, ‘Nardo.”

Then, his features softened and he extended a hand to help Leo up. Leo pushed it aside without thinking, rolling to his feet.

“That wasn’t a victory,” he protested. “I _let_ you win.”

Cue the sound of Raph and Mikey laughing.

“Pffffft.” Donnie looked smug. Of course he looked smug. “What, like you _let me_ win that card game last night? Get real.”

He raised his arms, the digits of his hands forming sarcastic air quotes, and that was when something in Leo snapped.

He lunged again, the sword’s blade making silver semicircles in his vision. The air crackled.

Donnie jumped back, bo staff up in front of him again.

“Hey, wha-- _hey_. I beat you fair and square!”

Leo lunged again. Donnie parried with his staff, and the clashing metal sent up little dancing sparks.

Somewhere far away, someone was yelling something that sounded a bit like ‘ _knock it off_.’

“Like hell you did,” Leo ground out. “The stupid sword just misplaced my portal, that’s all.”

“Maybe it’s not the sword,” said Donnie, a hard, irritated edge creeping into his voice. “Maybe it’s you. Maybe you just need to, I dunno, _practice_ once in a while.”

Leo swiped again, and this time Donnie’s propellers kicked in and his shell lifted him out of the blade’s reach.

“I said KNOCK IT OFF.”

Leo stiffened, realizing someone was holding him back by his shoulders. Judging by the strength behind the grip, that someone had to be Raph. Leo straightened, breathing hard. When had he started breathing hard? Off to one side, Mikey was looking nervously between his other three brothers.

Donnie’s propellers placed him back onto the ground only a couple feet away and retracted with a final, vibrating buzz back into his battle shell. Donnie crossed his arms, glaring darkly.

“I know why you’re like this.”

“Oh?” The word came out sounding distinctly less cool/calm/collected/funky/fresh than Leo had intended. In fact, it came out sounding, uh, bitter.

“You’re jealous.”

Leo choked out a laugh, and yeah, sure, okay, that one was _meant_ to sound bitter.

“You’re like this because I can do all sorts of things you can’t,” Donnie continued, spreading his arms wide. “And if I get any better at the stuff you _can_ do, you won’t stand out in any way.”

Leo froze. “T-That’s wack,” he managed. “You’ve got it all wrong!”

“I don’t think so.” Donnie glared. “I think you’re terrified of me. You need someone below you. You need somebody to surpass! You’re terrified that once I catch up to the rest of you, _you’ll_ be at the back.”

“Guys, look,” Raph was saying, “I get that you have this weird rival twin thing going on, but do we have to do this now? As in, when we could be watching _In the Line of Duty 4?_ For real?”

But Leo could barely hear him. All he heard were Donnie’s observations - no, _accusations_ \- ringing in his head.

Raph had loosened his grip on Leo’s shoulders.

Leo didn’t actually remember breaking free, or moving toward Donnie, or drawing his sword for the third time that day.

He didn’t remember cutting the bo staff in half. All he remembered was the loud _CLANG!_ the pieces of staff made when they hit the concrete floor of the lair, that horrible echo as they rolled in opposite directions - one hitting Leo’s toe and the other disappearing under the vert ramp.

Oh.

_Oh, crap_.

**. . .**

So, to summarize: 

  * Raph was mad at him.
  * Mikey was cross with him, and maybe even a little scared, which was so much worse.
  * Dad didn’t seem to give a shit, which was pretty dad of him, and the one thing Leo could reliably count on.
  * April? April seemed mad at him.



Oh, and Donnie was not speaking to him, obviously. 

“I didn’t know it could even break!” Leo had (probably) spluttered at the time. He couldn’t always remember things from when he got anxious, and besides, sometimes the retorts he came up with ~in post~ were better than the ones that came to him on the spot. And, well, sometimes he got them mixed up when he replayed the scene in his head later. Whatever. Whatever! He was certain he’d told Donnie he hadn’t known the staff would break, along with the hundred other placating things he must have said, none of which had worked.

“Really! I didn’t think I could just--” Just break it. “I mean, isn’t it supposed to be made of triple-reinforced titanium or whatnot?”

“You have a magic sword,” Donnie had (probably) said. “Magic can do lots of stuff you don’t expect.”

He’d sounded kind of hollow when he stalked back off to his lab with the remains of the staff. Leo hadn’t liked his tone. That was why he’d blocked it from his memory. Yeah, that was it.

But the upshot was: nearly everyone was mad at him, and Leo didn’t like it.

Two days had passed since the incident, and in that time Donnie had not left his lab or deigned to respond to any of the twelve-to-sixty messages Leo had sent, not to mention his brothers had barely spoken a word to him. Which was _so dramatic_ of them, honestly! Leo knew Raph was just pissed they didn’t end up watching In the _Line of Duty 4_ , anyhow.

Yeah. That was the reason.

And now April was being all cold and aloof too, and--

Leo lay sprawled on his bed, surrounded by a heap of unread manga. He wasn’t really feeling up to the challenge of literacy at the moment. He had bigger problems than the printed page.

Leo checked his phone for the hundredth time that morning, groaned as audibly as possible, and rolled over to contemplate the drippy pipe-laden ceiling.

Just then, pounding footsteps shook the floor, and for a second Leo sat up, giddy at the thought of Raph finally giving in and coming to talk to him like a mature--oh. Okay, nevermind. The footsteps faded into the distance as Raph headed past the door to Leo’s room, in the direction of…

Hey, wait a sec.

For the first time in two days, Leo smiled. For the first time in what felt like far too long, Leo had a plan.

If no one would talk to him or hang out with him or even SnapChat him, then he’d have to find some other way of keeping abreast of news in the lair: namely, how Donnie was doing.

It was espionage time.

**. . .**

The lair, being a subterranean architectural mistake of nightmarish proportions, was fully equipped with a set of air ducts. The turtles had discovered these when they were young, and had used them as a personal McDonald’s PlayPlace for weeks, until Splinter caught them and put a stop to it, insisting that the ducts could be filled with asbestos.

Considering the fact that they all frequently swam in raw sewage and the fact that toxic mutant goo flowed through their veins, asbestos seemed a dumb thing to worry about.

God only knew what the tunnels’ original purpose had been, and Leo didn’t care. He used the very tip of his sword’s blade to unscrew the bolts that held the vent cover firmly in place on the ceiling of his bedroom. When the thing was loose enough to manhandle, Leo gripped it with both hands and pulled it free, then jumped onto his mattress and used the bounce as leverage to boost him up into the ventilation shaft.

The shaft was dusty as heck, of course. Leo had to clamp a hand over his mouth and nostrils to keep from hacking up a lung at first, but he found himself getting used to the musty smell as he crawled further and further into the shaft.

After taking what must have been several wrong turns, Leo finally caught a snatch of conversation in familiar voices: Raph’s and Donnie’s. He shuffled his body down the air duct, taking care not to put too much weight on the seams, lest the metal creak.

Finally, he succeeded in wiggling into position just above the air vent that lead into Donnie’s laboratory. Through the grate in the vent cover, he could just barely make out the vague shapes of his brothers.

From the look of things, Raph had come in to bring Donnie some lunch. If the smell was anything to go by, it was a pastrami sandwich. Leo felt a pang of annoyed envy. Raph hadn’t brought _him_ a sandwich, even though _he_ was clearly just as upset by the whole affair as Donnie was.

Leo folded his arms crossly, and the shift made the walls of the airway groan ominously. Leo froze, but neither of his brothers seemed to notice the noise. The lair was a pretty creaky place, all in all.

Down below, Raph set the sandwich plate on a rare clear space at the end of Donnie’s workbench. He cleared his throat. Donnie, whose welding visor was all the way down, gave no visible reaction.

Raph cleared his throat again.

“Hey, uh. Can we talk about that thing you said?”

Donnie raised his head from his current project, but did not remove the opaque visor. “I’ve been known to say many a thing, Raphela. Be specific.”

Raph looked awkward. And a little sad. “That thing about catchin’ up to the rest of us.”

Wordlessly, Donnie spread his arms wide again, as if to demonstrate his accomplishments. Leo had to admit, it was a much more impressive gesture in Don’s lab, where he actually had _accomplishments to gesture at:_ the walls were lined with strange appliances, inventions, pieces of equipment and things that could’ve been mistaken for modern art installations if Leo hadn’t known Donnie better. These were weapons.

“Well?” Donatello asked, arms outstretched.

Raph scratched his head. “Well, what?”

Donnie’s tone was so acidic it could have peeled paint from a clapboard fence. “Do you think I’ve caught up?”

The last p of the word ‘up’ popped. Leo’s throat was dry.

“Don. Come on,” Raph was saying, “we’ve been over this. You don’t gotta catch up to the rest of us. Just ‘cause your shell makes it...kinda different for you to do stuff, that doesn’t mean you got catchin’ up to do.” He faltered hopefully, “Right?”

Donnie stiffened visibly.

“Actually,” he said, his voice icy, “if does mean I have catching up to do. News flash, I’ve been working to catch up with you guys this whole time! And I can only do most of the things you can do because I’ve worked really, really frickin’ hard!”

Raph opened his mouth to speak, but Donnie wasn’t finished yet.

“Not just training, Raph, but _building_ . Inventing! I’ve had to work _so hard_ to make life…” he paused, searching for words, “...to make life _accessible_ for me in the same way it’s automatically accessible for you and Mikey and Leo and Dad and April and...and…”

Something in Donnie’s voice had gone all wobbly, and he stopped speaking abruptly. In the room below, Raph looked...well, miserable. Leo was suddenly glad Donnie was wearing that visor. He was a little afraid to see his brother’s face right now.

“Leo was fine as long as I was catching up,” Donnie continued, his breath shaky but his voice steady. “But now that I’ve caught up, he’s mad that I stand a chance of surpassing him.”

Raph sighed. It was one of those patient, gentle sighs - one that contained no tiredness or anger, one of those sighs that only Raph was good at.

Leo watched him put a hand on Donnie’s shoulder as he said, “Look, you two are twins. You’ve always been competitive, and you’ll probably be that way forever. But that doesn’t mean you can’t be kind to each other too--”

“You don’t get it!” Donnie buried his face in his hands, which was kind of awkward to do with that enormous welding visor on. “Yeah, okay, me and Leo both wanna be successful - so what? So do you, so does Mikey, so does everybody! But success...is never gonna mean as much to you guys as it does to me.”

The expression on Raph’s face told Leo he was thinking hard, trying to process what his brother was telling him.

“Because...because your shell makes things different for you?”

“Difficult!” Donnie let out an exasperated sniffle. “Not just _different_ \- difficult. And...and dangerous, sometimes.”

Raph’s face fell. “I’m sorry.”

“I don’t want you to be sorry!” Donnie stood up. “I don’t want anyone to feel sorry for me! I’m just tired of everyone pretending that having a soft shell doesn’t…” he trailed off, “...doesn’t make my life harder sometimes. Okay?”

Raph didn’t respond. He still had his processing expression on.

“Sorry I yelled,” Donnie muttered into the vacuum of silence.

“It’s okay,” said Raph. He sat down on the workbench, and Donnie sat back down beside him.

“I thought you liked pretending,” Raph said eventually. “I thought you liked pretending you weren’t different.”

“I think I did,” said Donnie hesitantly, “sometimes. But it’s tiring. It’s...exhausting, actually. Especially when I can tell other people are uncomfortable when I bring it up.”

Raph turned to look at him, shocked. “Are we--? You mean, me an’ Mikey?”

Donnie smiled a bit. “Nah! I mean, well. Okay, sometimes, yeah. Sometimes it’s you guys, sometimes it’s Leo, sometimes it’s Dad and April.” He paused, seeming to gather his thoughts. “It’s not really any one person, it’s just, like, little things. I can tell everyone’s kind of collectively uncomfortable with the shell thing.”

Raph said nothing, so Donnie took the invitation to continue. “Growing up, it was such a huge talking point because we had to have all these plans for how to stop me from getting hurt and how to treat my injuries if I did happen to get hurt. And once I got old enough to start inventing various aids to minimize all the hazards associated with being a softshell turtle in a hard-knock world--” (Ah, thought Leo, _there_ was the dramatic flourish characteristic of a true Donnie monologue!) “--once I created the battle shell, it was like everyone just decided to sweep the disability stuff under the rug. And now I feel like I’m not really allowed to bring it up, or else everyone gets weird, or I get weird, or both.”

When he finished he looked up sheepishly, which was a hard sort of vibe to convey through a welding visor but somehow Donnie was doing it anyway.

“Sorry,” he said. “Guess this is pretty off-topic. That was light-years away from…” he shook his head, “Hey, what were we talking about originally?”

“The catchin’ up comment,'' supplied Raph.

“Ah,” said Donnie. “Right. Well. In short, yes, I have had to catch up to the rest of you. But I think I’ve succeeded, don’t you?” He flashed a smile. “Regardless of how Leo feels about it.”

Raph was silent for a bit, then he spoke.

“I think,” he said, “give it a year or two, and pretty soon the rest of us’ll be sprinting to catch up with _you_ , kiddo. And Leo’ll just have to get used to it.”

Leo was certain that beneath that visor, Donnie was either grimacing or smirking. One of the two. But to Leo’s shock and dismay, his brother’s next comment wasn’t about him at all.

“Thanks for the sandwich,” Donnie said, prodding at the pastrami with a ruler. “And thanks for listening.”

“Yeah, uh.” Raph stood, scratched the back of his neck. “I’m sorry you felt like you couldn’t talk about your--”

“Disability,” said Donnie promptly, but his tone was patient. “It’s okay to say disability. The word won’t bit you.”

“I’m sorry for making you feel like you couldn’t talk about your disability,” Raph tried again. “I’m gonna do better. And the others will, too! I’ll talk to them, or...or, if you don’t want that, I’ll make sure to lead by example or--”

Donnie stood and hugged him.

“You’re already doing better.”

**. . .**

Leo stayed in that ventilation shaft for what felt like hours, even after Raph left. He stared down into the lab, not really able to see or watch anything. Not able to pay attention to anything except the roaring of his own heartbeat and his own stiff muscles.

Leo’s initial plan had been to eavesdrop, get the scoop on how Donnie was feeling, ignore said scoop, and tumble into the lab from above, surprising everyone in the vicinity with his wild antics. If Leo was funny enough, he would be forgiven. It was a tried-and-true formula.

Only, now he felt kinda weird. Kinda not good.

Abandoning his plan, Leo scooched backwards along the tunnel, took another handful of wrong turns, and eventually reemerged back in his bedroom.

Raph was sitting on his bed, arms crossed. He did not look amused.

_Uh-oh, sisters_ , said the horrid social media influencer facsimile that lived in Leo’s brain rent-free.

“You were spying on us, weren’t you?”

Leo dropped into the room, coughing and brushing off dust. “How could you tell?”

“I could HEAR YOU IN THE VENT, DUMBASS.”

“What?” Leo gasped, “But that can’t be! I concealed the sound of my footsteps like a true ninja.”

“You didn’t conceal jackshit!” Raph closed his eyes. “The only reason Donnie didn’t hear you is ‘cause he was wearing that ridiculous welding helmet thing.”

“Oh.” Leo’s impending panic attack paused mid-swing. “So he doesn’t know?”

Raph glared. “Don’t think so. But let this be a lesson to you.”

“A lesson about how to better conceal my footsteps like a true ninja warrior?”

“A lesson about being a kinder and less shitty brother!” Raph bellowed.

“Sheesh, alriiiiiight.” Leo let himself fall backwards onto the bed beside his brother. “Cool it, will ya? I didn’t get caught, so I’m in the clear.” He watched the ceiling for a moment, then sat bolt upright. “Wait. What do you mean, a shitty brother?”

Raph winced. “What I mean is, you gotta go in there and apologize for destroying Donnie’s staff.”

“But!” Leo pouted involuntarily. “But it was an accident! It’s not _my_ fault.”

“Yeah, of _course_ it’s not your fault. _It’s never your fault_. Just like it wasn’t your fault when we got trapped in the labyrinth---”

Leo did finger funs. “Hey, we had an a- _maze_ -ing time in that maze.”

“Just like it wasn’t your fault when Donnie twisted his ankle during the lair games---”

“Uh, that was a _bonding experience_? It brought us closer.”

Raph was really losing his patience now. “Just like it wasn’t your fault when you launched us through a portal straight into that giant snake’s mouth!”

“That was performance art, dude, chillax.”

“Ugh!” Raph stood, making for the exit. “Y’know what, fine! Figure out how to apologize on your own.”

_Well_ , thought Leo as he watched his brother’s retreating form, _that could have gone better_.

**. . .**

“Hey, um. Am I a shitty brother?”

Leo found his youngest sibling where his youngest sibling was most frequently found: in the kitchen. At present, Mikey was concocting what looked like a lasagna if lasagna involved meringue. Currently there were two wolves inside Leo, so to speak - one wolf wanted desperately to know what the fresh hell Michael was attempting to bake, and the other wolf wanted to remove Leo’s eyeballs and wipe his memory so he never had to look at or think about the dish again. In the end, neither wolf won and Leo settled for simply gaping at the abomination.

Mikey considered his question for a moment. “Nah, you’re just a shitty person.”

_Okay, ouch_. 

Leo tried the casually playful approach. “Thanks, Mr. Delicate Touch.”

“Did you apologize?” asked Mikey curtly.

_Okay, ouch for real that time_. Apparently, his brother would have nothing to do with the casually playful approach.

“Yep.”

Mikey made a face. 

“What?” Leo balked. “I did, I apologized. Really! I texted Don like two brazillian times! I was very charming.”

“I’m sure you were.” Mikey glanced between Leo and the meringue lasagna. “Oh, and for the record, I’m pretty sure a Brazillian is a nationality, not a unit of measurement. You’re thinking of a billion.”

Leo waved his hand. “Potato, tomato. My point is, I apologized and I was very charming about it. Why are you looking at me like that?”

Mikey took a deep breath and put down the spatula. Oh, so shit was about to get real.

“Leo,” he said, “I’m gonna give you some friendly advice---”

“Whoa-ho-HO, my lil bro? Giving _me_ advice? How ad---”

Leo had been about to say “ _how adorable_ ,” but something in Mikey’s scowl forced him to swallow the words before he had a chance to say them.

“Leon, I am not being cute right now. Listen up ‘cause I’m only gonna say it once.”

“Yes, sir, right away, sir.”

Michaelangelo put his hands on his hips. “Being charming is not the same as being kind.”

He went back to whipping egg whites.

A minute passed, and then another.

“Wait,” said Leo, “was that it?”

“Uh huh.”

“That was your friendly advice?”

“Mm-hm.”

“Your big piece of wisdom was, ‘ _being charming isn’t the same as being kind_ ,’? Really?” He made air quotes with his digits. (Ugh, what a Donnie thing to do.)

Mikey gave him a pointed look. “Think about it. Take a second, if you need to. It’s easy to pass charm off as kindness - so much so that it can be real easy to mistake one for the other. But the difference is noticeable when it counts.”

Leo scratched his head.

“Um. Okay. Thanks...I think?” He turned to go, then stopped to look back over his shoulder. “Can I have some of whatever you’re making?”

“When I’m finished,” Mikey replied. “It’ll be a few hours. Can’t rush art, babeyy!!”

**. . .**

Having exhausted his every option, Leo sought out his father.

This was harder than one might think, given that Splinter tended to interrupt his sedentary lifestyle of wanton gluttony every now and then by roaming the sewers in search of...well, Leo didn’t exactly know. Himself, maybe? The New York City waste disposal system was as good a place as any to get a little soul-searching done.

Leo found Splinter crouched in a meditative position at the edge of a concrete embankment about a half-mile down the central drainpipe.

“Am I a bad person?” he asked immediately.

Splinter said nothing. It took Leo a moment (and a single deafening snore) to realize that his dad was asleep.

“Psst. Hey. Dad.” He nudged Splinter’s shoulder with the hilt of his sword. “It’s time for some frickin’ father-son bonding time. Wake up.”

Splinter roused himself blearily. “Huh?”

“Am I a good person or a shitty person?”

“Wh--” The old rat spluttered incoherently for a second before regaining his composure. “Son, do you usually start conversations this way? My word.”

Leo swallowed, suddenly feeling all the energy drain out of him. “It’s important,” he said at last. “Donnie’s really mad at me.”

With a long-suffering sigh, Splinter beckoned for Leo to take a seat beside him. “My son.”

“Mm?”

“Do you know why you experience failure more often than your brothers do?”

“Wh--!” Leo bristled reflexively. “ _Hey_.”

“It is because your outlook on personal growth has no foundation.”

Leo was taken aback. Why did his dad suddenly feel like slinging heavy words around all of a sudden? Heck, Leo hadn’t realized Splinter even knew what phrases like _personal growth_ meant. His day was getting worse by the minute. Leo groaned aloud.

Beside him, Splinter waited until he had Leo’s full attention before he continued. “When your brothers train, they are trying to be better than they used to be - but you are trying to be the best. You are setting yourself up for failure.”

Leo pouted. “Are you saying I can’t be the best at something? I don’t see what’s wrong with wanting to be the best at something.” He crossed his arms. “Why can’t I be the best at something?”

Splinter affixed him with a gaze so deadpan it was nearly comical. “Because you are fourteen.”

Leo, who’d been ready to (as Mikey would have put it) fly off the panhandle, deflated a bit. “Oh,” he said simply.

Beside him, his father cleared his throat. “Your brothers try to be better than last time. But Blue? Blue has to be perfect.” Once more, he broke into a gravelly laugh. “And you wonder why you are always failing!”

Leo felt his shoulders slump. He watched his feet swing back and forth above the murky water. “I mean, you don’t know that,” he mumbled dejectedly. “It could just be that the sword sucks. It’s a stupid old sword anyway. I bet it’s defective.”

But Splinter wasn’t done. “Your mystic weapon is unreliable because you are unreliable. Skills are not inherent, they are learned. Forget being the best. Just try to be better than last time.”

“ _Inherent?”_ Leo sniffed angrily. “Okay, I’m calling BS. That is not a dad word. You definitely dated Bruce Lee just so you could steal all his good quotes or something. Sheesh.”

Splinter said nothing; he stared ahead at the rushing water, looking content. Leo followed his gaze. The sewers were basically the opposite of pretty, but he had to admit, there was something peaceful and comforting about them at times. After a handful of minutes, Leo stretched and stood. But as he turned to leave, a sudden thought stopped him.

“Hey, dad? Am I, uh. Am I a shitty person?”

Splinter blinked. “No,” he said after a moment’s consideration. “You are just a shitty brother perhaps.”

He barked out his characteristic hoarse laugh and moved to slap Leo on the back with his tail. But when he saw the look on Leo’s face, his expression grew somber. 

Splinter sighed. “My son,” he said. “You are a fourteen-year-old. You are barely even a person yet.”

“That’s not what I meant and you know it.”

Splinter raised a snarl-nailed hand. It took Leo a moment to realize what his father was trying to do; reluctantly, he knelt back down again so that Splinter could rest his hand on Leo’s shoulder.

“Everyone is a shitty person when they’re fourteen.”

“But dad, what if I never grow out of it?” God, Leo _hated_ how his voice cracked just a little. “What if I’m just, I dunno, _just bad_.”

At that, Splinter let out a throaty chuckle. “Of course you’re not going to grow out of it. I know you, son. You are going to _fight_ out of it.”

Leo swallowed. His throat was heavy. His head was heavy. “What’s the difference?” He asked after a moment, when he thought he could trust himself to speak without his voice wavering.

Splinter’s beady yellow eyes narrowed when he grinned. “Sometimes, there isn’t one. You think plants don’t have to fight when they grow? When there are rocks in their path and creatures that want to eat them? When they don’t think they have the strength to move in the direction of the sunlight? Hah!” Splinter doubled over cackling, doubled over so hard that Leo worried he might fall into the sewage. “Leonardo, much of growth is fighting. Just make sure you are fighting toward the sun, eh?”

Leo felt the ghost of a smile tugging at his mouth. “Honestly? I can’t decide if that doesn’t make any sense, or whether that was the first piece of real dad advice you’ve ever given me.”

And he turned on his heel to stalk back to his room, leaving his father to look out over the gushing water of the Bowery as it made its way steadily toward the East River.

“Wow,” Splinter said to himself when he was sure Leonardo was safely out of earshot. “I can’t believe he bought that. It was complete nonsense.” He turned to squint over his shoulder at his son’s form retreating steadily into the gloom. “Ha!”

Splinter could go to sleep that night content in the knowledge that yes, he _did_ deserve his one-of-a-kind ceramic No.1 Dad mug.

**. . .**

“Now, for the hard part,” Leo muttered. But honestly? It felt like every single consecutive part of his day had been the hard part. So, now for the harder part.

The entrance to Donnie’s lab was sealed twice-over with seven-inch titanium, which Leo now suspected it was possible for him to cut through. He didn’t bother knocking, just portaled his way in.

Oh. Huh. It had worked that time.

Stupid sword.

Don either hadn’t heard the swoosh-swoosh of the portal beneath his welding visor, or he was purposely ignoring Leo. Under usual circumstances, Leo would have bet his money on the latter, but in this case he suspected Donnie would tell him to get out if he’d realized he was there.

For now, Leo tip-toed around his brother’s shoulder to see what he was working on. Sure enough, it was the staff. From the look of it, the two halves couldn’t just be soldered back together - there was a complex network of wires that had to be reattached before the pieces of metal could be rejoined again.

“Donnie?”

His brother didn’t look up. “Hey.”

“I broke your staff.”

Donatello straightened, removed the visor, and stared. “Yeah,” he said slowly. “I know. We made a scene about it, like, yesterday or something.”

“No, uh.” Leo fiddled with the dangling tassels at the back of his mask. “No, like. Like, I, uh.”

Donnie’s eyelids were at half-mast. _Looks like he pulled another all-nighter_.

“On purpose. You broke my staff on purpose. That what you were gonna say?”

“Oh. Um. Yeah, actually. Yeah it was.”

Donnie swiveled back to his workbench. “I know that already. I hate to be the bearer of two identical reminders in the space of nary a minute, but we did in fact make a scene about this, like, the other day.”

Leo took a deep breath. “I’m gonna tell the others too. And if dad grounds me I swear I won’t sneak out this time.”

Donnie sighed. “Mmkay. Is that all?”

“I guess so?” It did not feel like that was all. Leo hovered at the corner of the workbench.

“Look, you can go away, alright? I’m not mad at you anymore. I forgive you, okay?”

Leo’s response was immediate. “You’re lying.”

“Yeah! Okay! Well!” Frustrated, Donnie pushed his rolling chair back from the bench and tossed a screwdriver across the room. “What else do you want from me? You can’t go back to whatever you’d rather be doing until I tell you what you want to hear, and meanwhile I can’t get any work done with you hovering over me like a…” He faltered, lost for words, “like a morose cumulonimbus!”

“A what now.”

“A sad cloud, ‘Nardo! A cloud that is sad!”

Leo flicked at a steel bolt sitting on the surface of the workbench. It rolled off the desk’s edge and dropped onto the floor with a soft _plink!_ sound.

“You don’t have to. Forgive me, I mean. You can still be mad at me.”

Donnie looked incredulous. “ _I don’t need your permission to be mad at you_.”

“UUUUUUUUGGGGHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.” Leo rubbed his eyes with the heels of his palms. “I am trying to say that you don’t have to act like everything’s fine. You don’t have to pretend to forgive me to get me to leave you alone, okay, look, I’m leaving you alone now. See?”

  
  


He got up and made a show of walking back toward the door, then realized with his face barely a millimeter from the double-layered hatch that the entryway was still sealed and he’d need his sword to get back out again. Well. He supposed he could go through the air ducts like a clown...he sidled back to the workbench to pick up his sword.

“I thought you were leaving me alone.”

“I _am_ leaving you alone,” Leo said loftily, “unless-- unless you don’t want to be alone?”

There was a weird lull in conversation. Wordlessly, Donnie scooted over to make room for him on the workbench.

“What’re you doing?” Leo asked, because he knew his brother liked being invited to lecture about his work.

“I’m rebuilding the hard drive from scratch and installing the new one where the old one used to be,” Donnie explained. “I figured I might as well _improve_ my staff if I’m going to all the trouble to fix it.”

“Whoa.” Leo really meant that whoa. “You can just, like, make your own hard drive? That’s pretty wild. I didn’t think--”

“A hard drive is little more than a miniature tape deck. The main component is a disc spinning at a known rate.”

“Huh.” Leo squinted. Maybe squinting was his version of Raph’s processing face. “So you’re kinda like a DJ.”

Donnie shrugged. “Not really.”

They continued in a silence that was mostly comfortable and only a little awkward, before Leo said, “Hey.”

“Mm?”

“In your expert opinion, like as a scientist, are we turtle software running on human hardware, or is it the other way around?”

Something about how the question had been phrased must’ve been so unexpected that Donnie actually let out a laugh.

“Uh,” he said, “I think we’re definitely human software running on turtle hardware. I mean, we were just regular turtles originally, right? Before the human bits got...downloaded?”

Leo nodded sagely. Downloaded. He’d never thought of the mutation in those terms before. After another minute or two, he cleared his throat and spoke up again.

“I don’t suppose you need any, uhhhhhh assistance? I was thinking I could help you repair it.”

Donatello froze. He’d suddenly gone very pale.

“I can gather materials to fix it and---”

“No, trust me, Leon, I appreciate the offer but I would rather let you put my body on ice and sell both my kidneys than let you touch my tech ever again.”

Oh. Okay, well that sounded pretty definite.

Leo shrugged. “Fine by me. Just wanted to put the offer on the table. Er, the workbench, I mean.”

Leo thought about Donnie’s conversation with Raph. His stomach felt tight.

“I meant what I said earlier,” he began again, “about how you don’t have to pretend to forgive me. And I...I mean that about a lot of other stuff, too. I don’t want you to have to pretend about anything when you’re around your family. That...that must suck.”

Donnie looked up at him, and for a moment Leo was afraid he’d been too on-the-nose and that his brother suspected he’d eavesdropped. But there was no suspicion in Donnie’s gaze, only a steady sort of wonder.

“Seriously,” Lewo pressed on. “I’m thinking maybe it’s time we - I mean, _I_ held myself to higher standards. And if I forget sometimes, you should hold me accountable.”

_I think that could be good for me_ , he thought privately. _And you_.

Donnie was silent for a while, then he smiled faintly.

“Hey Leon?”

“Nn?”

“Thanks. For letting me be mad at you.”

“You said it yourself. You don’t need my permission to be mad at me.”

“Oh, I know!” Don sounded almost cheerful now, teasing. “I frequently am mad at you. Like, quite frequently. Very frequentl---”

“Okay, I get it.”

Donnie smirked. “Just saying. Anyway, I’ve been thinking over your earlier offer and actually, I do think I could use your assistance.”

Leo perked up. “Wait, really?!”

“If I’m gonna bother to rebuild my staff,” Donnie said, “I’m gonna want to rebuild it as strong as possible. My plan is to put all possible new alloys and metal combos for the body of the staff through some trials, to figure out which is the toughest. For that, I need--”

Leo felt a grin spreading across his face, “My sword.”

“Bingo.”

“Don’t you mean bazinga?”

“Fuck you.” Donnie was grinning for real now. “Trials start tomorrow at 7 A.M. sharp. Don’t be late.”

Leo stood to attention, giving his brother a military salute. “At your command!” He turned to go, but stopped to look back over his shoulder.

“Oh...hey, Donatello?”

“Mm?”

“You wanna act out the fight scenes from In the Line of Duty 4 after dinner? I’ll let you be Donny Yen this time.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's a wrap. I hope you enjoyed this fic, despite it being poorly organized and weirdly paced. I had a ton of fun writing it. I miss Rise so much, but I'm so thrilled with all the incredible content this fandom has created in wake of the show's cancellation.
> 
> If you were intrigued by Raph and Donnie's discussion of disability and the language surrounding disability, I encourage you to check out [this excellent article from disability activists](https://humanparts.medium.com/im-not-differently-abled-i-m-disabled-4ed8637036c3)
> 
> Catch ya on the flipside! Cowabunga, dudes.


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